A Modern Stigma

How Sexual Mores did a 180

The word stigma derives from Ancient Greece that connotated a mark of disgrace branded to a person, whether for criminality, breaking a taboo, or another violation of a social norm. It is a visible, often permanent mark on a person that will drastically reduce his status in a community. While not as strong as full banishment, it places him outside the trusted inner circle, and will make everyone dealing with him leery, not just because of the infraction he committed, but because even being seen with him could bring a little of the stain to the third party. Stigmas have been a part of every culture and are critical in enforcing a code of uniform behavior on its members. While there are many things that can bring shame on a person, the stigma of being caught in improper sexual relations has always loomed supreme.

One of the most famous examples of stigma is from a book that is still a staple of High School literature classes, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. The book portrays the travails of a woman who is caught in adultery and is forced to wear an embroidered “A” on her chest. While this shaming tool is not used today, there are more subtle ways of doing the same thing with the dawning of social media.

The fear of being stigmatized was common in other classic literature. In Pride and Prejudice, one of the key plot points occurred when Lydia runs off with the soldier Wickham and the sisters watch in horror as Lydia not only risked forever tainting her own prospects if found out, but the incident would damage the prospects of the other sisters, where suitors would see the family as being tainted by the smell of “bad breeding”. Later, Elizabeth falls for Darcy when he convinces Wickham to marry Lydia in a hasty marriage and saves the Bennett family’s reputation.

Of course I know the correct adaptation to post.

Even with the social repercussions, people are people. In most anyone’s family tree, you’re going to see some incidents of the first child being born very close to their wedding… too close. Even in modern times you see this. I’ve personally witnessed an incident regarding a religious authority figure who hastily set up a wedding for his daughter after she got pregnant. While the pregnancy was secret, people put two and two together when a fully developed baby was born four months after the wedding. Usually by that time everyone shrugs, figures the couple is married now, and moves on with their life.

There was even an incident I know of where a very conservative college refused admission to a woman because her older sister who went there got pregnant and dropped out. They figured after that embarrassment the family couldn’t be trusted to maintain the college’s moral standards. Fair or not, that’s been the reality since time immemorial. You aren’t just a floating independent individual, but will be judged by the company you keep.

While there is a stigma, though not nearly as strong now, against pregnancies without a stable partner in general culture, most every other sexual more has eroded significantly. There is no stigma in general culture against sex before marriage, and cohabitation before marriage has become an expectation where it was a scandal just a couple generations ago. A lot of this stems from birth control dramatically reducing the risk of pregnancy, so traditional safeguards ensuring out-of-wedlock births didn’t happen lost a lot of their power. The purely practical logic went away, and people were met with only a religious argument in a radically secularizing society.

I thought about this as Dee made an excellent response to one of my comments. I was criticizing an article that was lamenting men not wanting to tie the knot, stringing along women they had no intention to marry. I noted how the actions of the author in allowing access to sex and cohabitation would disincentivize any man from marrying.

Dee, in response, said this.

As an older woman, I look back on my younger years and see that if I had stuck with the traditional “no sex before marriage” approach, my dating prospects would have been extremely limited (even the moderately religious young guys wouldn’t put up with that) and I’d likely be single with no family now. And the supply of religious women who don’t want sex before marriage is much higher than the demand, and the men that do want such a woman most value physical attractiveness and submissiveness, so only the women in the top 1/3 in those traits are likely to ever find a partner who will agree to marriage without first having sex. And then the woman will be in a position of little power in that relationship.

So living with a man may disincentive him to get married, but not doing so will likely also leave you alone if you’re of average or worse attractiveness. The way our society is functioning right now isn’t leaving people a lot of good choices.

In my case the man I lived with did eventually propose and we’ve been married for 24 years and have 2 teenage kids. He married me because he wanted to, not because he wanted sex. He could have gotten sex anywhere. Withholding sex until marriage only works if nearly everyone does it, and it also leads to marriage at very young ages.

Her essential argument is that attractive women will be able to find a traditional man who is willing to tolerate something outside of the cultural norm because of her perceived value, but more average women are going to be out of luck with this strategy. There simply aren’t enough trad men to go around. The cultural expectation of sex and cohabitation is so assumed that even if a woman wanted to do things the old way, she would be at a disadvantage with her peers.

In short, modern society has a cultural norm of behavior that is utterly detrimental to marriage and hurts prospects of developing relationships, but to go against the tide will brand you out-of-touch at best, and a rigid, moralistic busybody at worst. In the before times a woman shacking up with a man she is not married to would be scandalous and would hurt her in social standing. Also, giving access to sex before real commitment with her current partner would lower her chances of marrying him.

Now, if a woman does not follow a detrimental sexual strategy, she is hurt in her social standing. People will brand her as a rigid holy-roller who is behind the times by refusing to put out. In other words, she will receive a stigma of being a frigid, unpleasant woman. It’s amazing that a moral paradigm has been flipped on its head to the extent what once was wrong to do a few generations ago is now seen as wrong to NOT do in modern times.

It’s not only male companions either, as her female colleagues will likely look at this with disdain. When all of her friends are having sex regularly after a few dates, shacking up, and follow general cultural norms, a woman who goes her own way will seem like higher-than thou behavior, or even traitorous to her social group.

Also, even if a man is okay with the arrangement, while there has never been much of a stigma of an unmarried man sleeping with women, a stigma has developed against a man who waits until marriage, and the extremely low percentage of men who are virgins on their wedding day make them strong outsiders with their compatriots. Also, a man wanting to take the traditional route of waiting will be looked at with suspicion and frustration by the woman, who will secretly wonder if he is gay (I know an incident where this ended up being true).

There are countless other modern expectations. The length of the relationship from dating to marriage varies wildly, and the form of the wedding is all over the place from a courthouse to a Church. Worst of all, the most important part, expectations within the marriage, have never been murkier.

The requirement of sex in marriage, once a given, is now in doubt. You will often see a couple where one of the partners will refuse sexual intercourse outside of the usual medical exceptions, and often online you’ll see the mob take the side of the person who has refused sex for years. This was once looked at with scorn by everyone as a betrayal of vows, now the poor schlub who just wants intercourse with his wife is deemed abusive by pressuring her. A woman who is disgusted by her husband watching pornography is now expected to just accept it and stop being such a shrew.

Not having children in marriage was once looked at with derision by the wider community, but now you’re more likely to get nasty looks for being in the city with four or five kids by your side. Johann Kurtz has written about how having kids and being a stay-at-home mom is now seen as a low-status calling, and often they are seen as having middling intelligence by their working counterparts.

You can argue this needs to be all hashed out beforehand, but people are fickle and change their mind on a dime. If a marriage has no cohesive form in a culture, it’s largely worthless as it is unable to enforce social norms.

Essentially every tradition has been eroded and its opposite has taken its place. With regard to the sexes, everyone is caught in a Catch-22 of choosing between bad options and actions in choosing a mate. Since a woman is incapable of radically transforming the culture, she has to choose the best of bad options. If she gives access to sex and shacks up, the man will likely be content with the arrangement and see no point in marriage. If she goes by traditional mores, a man is likely to think she’s not worth the trouble. Even with the difficulties, some will succeed, but not enough.

So what’s the solution? The best I can come up with is the same as I stated before. Tribe up.

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